Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1887-02-21

you for your interest. If we are ma
tional enemies, you speak as a man
and a soldier. But let me say this"
(now | cannot explain what induced
me to make the following foolish,
braggart speech but it bubbled up
and was spoken) "COlonel, you or
/ may die before night; we do not
know; but in so far as the result of
your courts finding is concerned, /
will be alive when you and your
twelve officers are dead and forgot
ten p
He left me in disgust, and l don't
blame him.
But such was my feeling. l did
not ''feel it in my bones," as the
slang goes, that death was so near.
The colonel and the entire twelve
composing the court died before |
was exchanged, ''shot to death in
one charge at Coal Harbor. / live
to write the occurrence twenty-five
years after the conversation.
1t may or may not be true that
when the grim monster singles out
his victim he sends him some way
spiritual premonition that he is going
to let fly from Deaths quiver the ia
tai dart. Be that as it may, had
no premonition of death.
Not when they stood me up to hear
my sentence and to answer, nor af-
forwards in the cool contemplation
my isolation and silent dungeon af-
forded; not when the officer of the
day, ,on that eventful execution morn
ing, read to me in my dungeon the
days programme, and delineated my
doom at the hands of twelve detailed
soldiers. He found me whistling as
I paced my narrow cell that morning,
and exclaimed in surprise:
"Good God, Captain what kind
of a man are you?"
E'Oh, 1 don't know skin and bone,
flesh and sinews, blood and bile.
Why"
"Why Don't you know you are to
be shot to-day? Outside here are the
twelve men detailed to send you into
eternity. You'll never see another
morning And here you are-whist-
ling"
"Well, why not whistle as long as
possible, and cry when you can not
laugh"
Hence, / may not be able to tell
you just how a man feels who stares
death calmly in the face, for may be
l do not comprehend my situation.
Rnt | was sentenced to death, that
| fully comprehended when they
marched me, handcuffed, between
two guards, with arms at "charge"
and bayonets fixed, back to the pris-
on; and, instead of to my former
12x12 cell, barred and bolted me in
an underground, dark, damp, dun
geon, three feet by ten, with a tub
occupying two feet of that sparse
space, significantly suggestive that /
was to stay right there until the day
and hour.
The sentence was fully realized
during the sunless days and no dark
er nights of the weeks that followed.
Daylight ! Good God, man you
do not appreciate what ray of glad,
bright sunlight is until shut in from
all that makes day beautiful.
Oh, yes; l comprehended, slightly,
that mine was no trifing sentence, as
| crouched in that felt darkness,
waiting till dilated pupils enabled me
to see imperfectly what was the
dampness that touched.
Finally, however, l was permitted
to send out and buy lamp, and keep
it lighted The walls had been re
peatedly white-washed, but the hu
mid filth oozing through the bricks
had pushed it off in discolored flakes.
The floor was stone solid or ce-
mented mass that at once negatived
any Inorganic idea of "digging out. 7
Away up yonder, ten or twelve. feet
away, was the arched brick ceiling,
whose sweaty surface told it, toe, was
under the sod. Shiny snails and
thousand legs'i drew their clammy
ways across the moist walls and floor;
vermin found and fed upon the nox-
ious dirt-damp; the disguised rats
that crept in at the grated door, dart
ed back to find more yielding sub
stance for their burrowing teeth.
But the dampness and the dark
ness and the dirt were but grains of
dust compared to the unutterable
oveiness that grew upon me in that
Not a human soul, not |
even brute, except the scampering |
rats, to break the stiffness of that
nurky tomb Out yonder, some
where, knew was a grim sentry, for |
[ heard the measured tread of the re-
ief as they left him on his lonely |
post. But l never saw or heard |
lim.
Twice a day, grimly silent, came
.he cooks detail with nay barrack
;Oup or coffee. But he was mute, |
lnder strict orders not to speak or
signal to the prisoner, as his baker
ike shovel reached in my morsel Of |
ainted food.
Perdition how ] strove to make |
lim speak! If he only would curse
ne, abuse me, anything; even his